I'm a Libertarian living in Humboldt County, CA. I've lived here in Eureka since 1973 and joined the Libertarian Party in 1992. This blog will mostly focus on local political issues, but I may stray into state and national issues as well, when I can't help myself. Please post your comments by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post. Although I do moderate comments, you need not be a registered user to post them.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Car Stereo Installer Needed

Anybody know of a good place to get a radio installed in our '95 Geo Metro? It doesn't have a radio now and I'm looking to get one.

I figured Eureka Car Stereo might be the place to go but, after reading the few reviews I found, I'm having second thoughts. Connie says she thought it was supposed to be a good place. The reviews have me wondering.

I realize online reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt. There's a number of people that will complain about nearly everything. Many times you can tell by reading a review that the reviewer is just such a person. I'm not sure about the ones I've read here and here, but none of them are good.

Any suggestions?

Addendum: Taking a look at Fortuna Audio Concepts, mentioned in one of the reviews, they look pretty good. I'd rather stay in Eureka, though.

11 Comments:

You didn't say if it ever had a radio or a place in the dash for one. Sometimes cars that have a space in dash for radio even got speakers but no radio and at times the wiring was there but no radio. We bought a radio from Crutchfield on line for a car that did not have a radio and found that all the speakers were there but the car had never had a radio but just a cover that snapped in where the radio would have been. We just put down what the car was and the year and then it listed all the radios that would fit. We went to Eureka Car Stereo recently to have a non working radio checked out and they took it out after confirming it would not work and we are sending it out of town to be repaired as it is a special radio that only a few people repair. Charged $15 to check it out and take it out along with a separate CD player.

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't thought about compatibility of the radio to the car.

The car has never had a radio as far as I can tell. No speakers and there's a big square piece of plastic in the middle of the dash down towards the bottom. I would guess that's where it would fit? I'd have to have speakers installed in the doors, too.

Found one on Crutchfield that is a radio/CD player (I think. It says it has AM/FM tuner) that includes speakers.For $89.00, that would be fine. I just wonder how much it would cost to install?

take it from a former car stereo installer, don't take a crutchfield stereo to Eureka Car, buy your stuff from them. car stereo is what they do, they know what works and what won't. they will stand behind their work, even if it isn't right the first time (hopefully it's the Kieth I knew, he would do a great job)

As I wrote earlier, I'm a bit leery of them based on their online reviews. At this point I'm thinking of at least going in to talk with them about it, though.

Exchanged a couple e-mails with the place in Fortuna. Sounded more than a bit pricey to me, but I'm not sure if we were on the same page. They might be misunderstanding what I'm looking for. Last estimate was almost $400.00, which is way over what we should be spending on a radio for the car.

My gut feeling is that any of the car stereo places are more into high end stuff. We just need an inexpensive radio- no CD necessary- and to have it installed. I'm thinking the car stereo places won't be interested in dealing with something like that. Not enough money in it for them.

Crutchfield sells all types of brands including what Eureka Stereo sells which is Alpine and Pioneer.

Who is the radio guy that is next door to Mike's garlic fries? He could probably install it. Could go by and just ask. He installed a radio for me in a car that had no radio but it had speakers.

Are you sure there are no speakers anywhere? Usually it is too hard to eliminate wiring on an assembly line and it ends up being there anyway. Someone that knows should be able to take a look or even look at your "book" for the car to see if it has anything on a radio and how it works, etc. Some speakers are just hidden and don't look like speakers. Had one car that some speakers were located in the flat panel by the rear window and covered with the same material the panel had.

Ahhh...that guy next to Mike's. Seems to me I went in there to have a VCR taken care of years ago. Hadn't thought of him.

I'm also gonna go check Radio Shack regarding another idea I have. That being an externally mounted radio that could be powered by the cigarette lighter.

As far as speakers go, I'm not sure. I don't think there's any but the car doors do have those slotted speaker openings in the front bottom part. I took the door panel off not long ago and didn't notice speakers. Then again, at the time I wasn't looking for speakers. I'll have to take another look. If nothing else, it probably means there's an easy place to mount some.

I took a Kenwood all band R 2000 in to the guy next to Mikes a few years ago. He lied when he said he could fix it and dicked around with it for 3 months. I finally had to send it to the Kenwood factory for repair.

Now that you mention it, the VCR I had him work on turned out not to be fixed, either, but I'm not sure it was his fault. It was a very old VCR, had a number of problems to begin with and I can't recall if he worked on the problem that resulted in us finally tossing it.

I was impressed, though, with the guy's ability to carry on a conversation. There were two other guys in his shop when I was there. He managed to carry on a perfectly coherent conversation on all 3 issues with the three of us at the same time without skipping a beat.